Page 182 – stevelawson.net

May 21, 2005

Searching, Finding

here’s the latest crop of weird things people have been looking for when stumbling into this ‘ere blog –

armstrong
steve on jerry springer show
danny baker resignation
do nothing til you hear from me
dude etymology
feline concussion
ism jbk download
janek gwizdala
racist hall of shame
strongbad good
%22whale rider%22
albano italian singer photos
andy gangadeen drum rack
avashai cohen and the international vamp band
bbc news lion midget
belouis some imagination lyrics download
bill frisell wild thang
brian houston petersfield
britian’s piano man
can’t get motivated

Blimey there are some weird surfers out there in net-world!

May 20, 2005

I have a new favourite online maps site

Over the years, I’ve used Streetmap.co.uk, mapquest.co.uk (and the .com version), Yahoo maps and the RAC directions website. Oh, and Multimap.

Well, I reckon Google Maps beats them all. The maps are great, the directions are clear, the pan in and out functions are really easy to use… We like, a lot.

And linking to it is easy too – Here’s a link to a map to Darbucka, the venue where my gig is next week – it’s underneath India EC1, the restaurant, so you get it pinpointed with a little marker thingie, and can then click on that and get directions.

All marvellous stuff.

May 18, 2005

Misplaced blame

Random musings time – was thinking today about how we react when we encounter incompetent people in whatever their field of work might be – useless sales people in shops, unhelpful assistants on public transport, crap waiters/waitresses etc. and how we get annoyed with them, when it’s clearly not their fault.

By that I mean said stupid person was at some point out of work. When you’re out of work you apply for whatever jobs are available, in the hope of being back in work and getting the bills paid. You can’t fault someone for being accepted for a job they applied for in their quest for work, even if they themselves don’t have the skills required to do the job. That, in the bigger scheme of things, is not their fault. It is however, the fault of the people who hire them, knowing that their inexperience/lack of skills and qualifications means they can pay them less.

They are the ones who fail to a) find people who can do the job, b)sell the job correctly when advertising the post in the first place c) provide adequate training when the person takes the job and d)have some kind of trouble-shooting mechanism for when the person ends up out of their depth (only a real bastard would start having a go at someone for not knowing something and instead asking for help… the problem comes when the help isn’t there).

So next time you come across someone that strikes you as hopelessly inadequate for their job, be nice to them, it’s not their fault. Congratulate them for getting the job, then go and kick their boss’s arse.

Music micro-news – just been recording some bits ‘n’ bobs, but soon discovered that what I was playing was very like something I’ve written before, but haven’t played live, so decided to learn that off the CD to play it in the set next week… maybe.

Soundtrack – Kaki King, ‘Legs To Make Us Longer’.

May 18, 2005

Gotta hand it to George…

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001,

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives — 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies.”

“Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported.”

Now, I’m not really a member of the George Galloway fan club – I was all in favour of his militant anti-war stance, am still very confused by his ‘I salute your indefatiguability’ speech to Saddam, and don’t trust his new Respect part at all. That said, his speech to the US Senate committee investigating claims that Saddam gave him shedloads of oil to sell was fantastic – the quote above is just a small part of it, quoted from this article on CNN.com. I’d love to see the video footage…

Soundtrack – a minidisc of a gig I did at the Barbican back in 2003, with Orphy Robinson, Mano Ventura and Filomena Campus, that I’ve never listened to before – the disc was lost under a pile of stuff, so today’s bit of tidying unearthed it. Bits of it are fantastic. There’s easily 20 minutes of editable top notch stuff. I might have to have a go some time!

May 18, 2005

Blogless and desperate!

Ah, blog’s back online – was blogless for a long time, thanks to a crash on Sarda’s new server, but it’s all back now. Phew!

Right, onto blog-things –

Went to a gig last night – M83 (be warned, the website plays loud unwanted music at you) were the headline attraction, who I’d heard of via The Cheat’s scrobbler list, and actually heard thanks to the lovely Lizzy at their record label, who sent me CDs to hear. Their sound is kind of big ambient meets punked-up rock beats. Quite an overwhelming sound, on the new album especially, relentless huge synths and wall of noise guitars, but in an anthemic soundscape kind of way. Most enjoyable, if a little oppressive. The live experience was pretty much what you’d expect – the same thing only louder and noisier. They played lots of stuff from both albums (I prefer the first one – ‘Dead Cities, Read Seas and Lost Ghosts’).

The support act was Pure Reason Revolution – whose bassist Chloe is an occasional student of mine, and who I have a few mutual friends with, so it was great to get to see them play at last. Their sound is VERY mid-70s psychedelic prog-rock – think Hawkwind, early Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, with a touch of Rhiannon-era Fleetwood Mac. They even look like the product of a fight between The Bay City Rollers and Flock Of Seagulls – rarely have more mullets been seen on stage since the mid-80s. Still, their set was great, and if they’d been around when I was 16, they’d have been my favourite band in the world ever. I’ll hopefully catch a headline set of theirs soon.

So inevitably, after a gig like that last night, I’ve been recording big proggy soundscapes today – I’ve done two, following a similar theme on each, we’ll see whether either ends up being releaseable… Might have to do a download-only soundscapes album soon.

Soundtrack – M83, ‘Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts’; Kings X, ‘Live All Over The Place.

May 18, 2005

Apparently I'm 13% Satanist…!!

Tom just posted a link to this quiz on what religion you should be over in the forum – here’s how mine came out –

You scored as Christianity. Your views are most similar to those of Christianity. Do more research on Christianity and possibly consider being baptized and accepting Jesus, if you aren’t already Christian.

Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic faiths; it follows Judaism and is followed by Islam. It differs in its belief of Jesus, as not a prophet nor historical figure, but as God in human form. The Holy Trinity is the concept that God takes three forms: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost (sometimes called Holy Spirit). Jesus taught the idea of instead of seeking revenge, one should love his or her neighbors and enemies. Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to save humankind and forgive people’s sins.

Christianity

71%

agnosticism

54%

Buddhism

50%

Judaism

46%

Paganism

46%

Islam

38%

Hinduism

33%

Satanism

13%

atheism

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

So the christian thing is not very surprising, nor are some of the others, but 13% Satanist??? Which 13% of me would be a practicing Satanist? It must have been the question about ‘you perfect evening would be eating your granny whilst listening to Deicide round at Anton Lavey’s house’…

May 17, 2005

Protest music is alive and well and on Jay Leno

Found this linked from Barky’s Blog – it’s Bright Eyes on Jay Leno singing ‘When The President Talks To God’ – dunno about you, but it sent shivers down my spine. A fabulous, angry, old school protest song, railing against the ills of the world, and somehow he got to do it on Leno.

I know very little about Bright Eyes, but will check him out a little more after this!

Soundtrack – Tommy Sims, ‘Peace And Love’; Seth Horan, ‘Conduit’ and ‘Notwithstanding’; Jeff Kaiser/Andrew Pask, ‘The Choir Boys’.

May 16, 2005

Web links…

Links have obviously been the main traffic driving thing for the web ever since it began. You go to a page, the info there contains a link to somewhere else, and so it goes on.

I often get emails from musicians wanting to ‘swap links’ – they’ll put a link to my site on their if I’ll add one to theirs on my site.

Now, while I appreciate the thought process behind this, that’s never been what a links page has been about for me. A links page should tell you a lot about the person whose site it is. It’s one of the first places I head when I’m checking out a website – what are they into, who do they want me to check out, what’s important to them? Same with blogs – you can tell a lot about a blogger by the blogs they read.

So my links page is all about what I listen to, what I’m into, what I think is important, musicians and things I want to support, places to go to get more info about the stuff that’s already on the site. My blog links on this page are to blogs I read, not blogs I want people to think I read cos it would be cool, or links I’ve swapped with other bloggers.

There are very few people on my links page that link back to me – a few of the bassists do, some of the music equipment companies etc. They are they cos I dig what they do, not because I can get some more traffic out of them.

If you want to link to me, please do. If you’d like me to link to you, send a link over, I’ll check out the site, and if it’s something that becomes part of my webosphere, it’ll go up there, but not if you make linking to you a condition of linking to me.

So, head over to my links page, check out some of the musicians, or the political stuff, or just the fun stuff. It’s all things I like a lot.

Or just have a read of the links to other blogs on this page.

Soundtrack – Seth Horan, ‘Conduit’ (that’s another link to follow to check out a fabulous singing solo bassist); Spearhead, ‘Stay Human’; David Wilcox, ‘Into The Mystery’.

May 15, 2005

weekend roundup

Lots of teaching yesterday, which was fun. Followed by lots of Edinburgh festival stuff – I was overdue on getting my press releases sent to the CVenues people, so needed to get those written – needed full press release, then 10 word, 20 word, 40 word, 50 word and 100 word versions of the blurb on the show! All needed for different types of advertising/promo/brochure etc. I got onto a bit of a roll and put them together pretty quickly. It remains to be seen what the press dept at CVenues make it them all…

Also sent them some photos for press useage – thanks to having had the photoshoot with the very wonderful Steve Brown, I have loads of very high quality pics to choose from. Edinburgh will, come August, be peppered with loads of pictures of me looking rather foxy (and slightly portly, worryingly…!)

Today was church this morning – fine preach for Pentecost Sunday drawing the parallel between the fragmentation of people through language at the tower of Babel and the reuniting of them through the disciples speaking in all the languages of those present at Pentecost – very nice link, not one I’d thought of before.

After church, it was off to celebrate the Bangla New Year in Spittalfields – was rather novel, and quite enjoyable, experience to be in a 2% minority as a white person at the celebrations. Lots of vibrant colours and happy people.

From there we (we being Steve photo-dude and his lovely wife Lorna, along with Paul and Rachel, Jazzy and Angus – Angus being my godson) headed over to Spittalfields market for a mezze lunch in that place that has the canope outside just along from Spitz, and then a stroll round the market.

Then home, knackered after lots of walking and carrying Jazzy (she’s 6, fortunately, so I wasn’t actually giving a full grown adult a piggy-back around all day!), but contented after a fun day.

Soundtrack – Spearhead, ‘Stay Human’; Joni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now’; Jonas Hellborg, ‘Octave Of The Holy Innocents’; Thelonius Monk, ‘Greatest Hits’.

May 13, 2005

I'm in a composing frame of mind…

well, I’ve been recording stuff, anyway. After a rather long hiatus, the impetus to record came back with the duo project with Cleveland. We recorded the duo stuff, and I left my bass rig wired up to the computer so I could record some solo bits ‘n’ bobs. So I’ve been recording a couple of tracks a day for the last few days, and some of it’s rather good.

The format is as usual, in that I’m recording the stuff live, largely made up on the spot, but I’m then editing the tracks, and trying to get some kind of structure from the initial version, and then re-learn that to get a nice arrangement together. We’ll see how well it works!

The good thing is that I’ll have a couple of new tunes to premier at the upcoming gigs, which is nice, and will probably throw one of them in the direction of the street team, later this week. If they behave themselves.

Other news – the first of my show sponsors for Edinburgh has confirmed. Working on three more (if anyone reading this fancies sponsoring the show, you can email me for details). If I get all four, it’ll cover the cost of the venue hire, significantly droppping my financial risk!

Have also sorted out accomodation for while we’re there, thanks to hugely generous and lovely friends in Edinburgh. It’s all coming together!

So, life is good. Now I just need to get on with writing some of the teaching stuff that I’ve got to do, for musicdojo.com and BGM. Busy-busy!

Soundtrack – Zakir Hussein, ‘Making Music’; some old MP3s of unreleased stuff of mine; Tommy Sims, ‘Peace and Love’; Ani DiFranco, ‘Little Plastic Castle’; Orphy Robinson, ‘When Tomorrow Comes’.